Meeting DJ

A friend and I have discussed how our worlds have become smaller since the COVID-19 shutdown. Our gaze is more microscopic personally versus telescopic. So, I am going to write about my neighborhood again this week.

Social Media of course has opened up the skies bringing the world to our smart phone, for good and for ill. A Pandora's iPhone for sure. I am not sure we are equipped neurologically for all of the images and inflammatory rhetoric that gets downloaded into our minds. I suppose it can be a good thing that those things that are disturbing, we have to deal with and not ignore, but I think we are also being concussed, I, for one, am attempting to disengage from the dissension unless I think I can add something productive. I am using my snooze, block, and hide features a lot these days on both extremes Right and Left. I also know that it is hard to be constructive considering the current state of affairs in our Trumpian Dystopia. 

I am not sure the Center will hold. I am doing my best to see that it does.   

Last week I wrote about my neighbor's tossing a couch and love seat out in the front yard for ten weeks until something gave and the old ratty furniture was moved or picked up and discarded of properly. I made the observation that the respect of property reflects the neighborhood. And signs of decay like furniture rotting away, being rained on, and grass growing up around it, conveys a message that the neighborhood is losing a norm that it is not appropriate to treat one's front yard as a trash dump. It sends a signal that other misbehavior can arise and won't be checked. Sweep your front porch type of idea and maybe the ATM won't be dynamited across the street. We are all in this together.

A dude, his name is DJ (a new resident) living next to the offending townhouse, was cutting and trimming his grass a couple of weeks ago before the furniture was moved. He was being meticulous in his efforts, all the while he can only do so much with the shared grass property. I am sure he was weighing if he should just mow the grass and weed whack around the furniture. But, that has some downsides. The neighbor might feel dissed because someone did something without permission on their property (or their landlord's). Weird how that works, because they have created the problem and won't address it. Second, it can create a sense of entitlement that if you do it once, the expectation is that you will do it again. Somehow it becomes an obligation. Human nature is messed up and what seems good on the surface can have unforeseen negative consequences. 

Last Saturday, I was out mowing my grass and DJ came out of his house and was walking up the street to get his mail. We live in one of those neighborhoods where we don't have an individual mailbox in the front of our properties but instead a big shared box that has individual slots with keys. Frankly, the postal system should do that for all houses in residential neighborhoods as I am sure it is quite a bit more efficient to not have to start and stop every ten feet in residential neighborhoods to disburse mail in each homes' mailbox. I said hello to DJ from an appropriate social distance and introduced myself. He reciprocated with a friendly introduction back. It was a brief yet cordial and friendly exchange.

Did I mention that DJ is a black man? Maybe it shouldn't matter but it does. In the centuries of exchanges between whites and blacks, it takes zero wokeness to note that they were unequal and often, and to this day, a lot worse than just that. We have to start anew somewhere and just simple respect, empathy, and friendliness, can go a long way to bridge the divide. It is more complicated than that of course but where it starts can also create systemic change, as such grace ripples through society. I know it is not rocket science here and I shouldn't get the Nobel Peace Prize. A small gesture of welcome to the neighborhood. That would be what I would want someone to do if I was new in town. Love thy neighbor stuff. Pretty simple.